This application for supplemental funding of the Statistics and Methodology Core C is a request to support the final two years of the current funding cycle for P30HD15052. The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center (VKC) for Research on Human Development, located at Vanderbilt University, has four research service cores supported by the P30. In 2002, the application to renew the P30 resulted in a recommendation for 5 years of support for the Administrative (Core A), Neurosciences (Core B) and Clinical Research and Assessment (Core D) cores. The review of Core C resulted in a number of recommendations that the review panel believed were important to raise Core C activities to a level of excellence that the other core services were viewed as having attained. This resulted in a 3-year funding cycle, with an expectation of identifying new leadership, increasing biostatistics consulting, and producing novel generative research collaborations. We have taken this recommendation seriously, and over the course of the past 2.5 years, in consultation with program administrators of the Mental Retardation Branch of NICHD and members of our scientific advisory board, we have restructured Core C significantly. This has been possible because of the establishment of a Department of Biostatistics in the School of Medicine, chaired by Frank Harrell, a national leader in application of statistical methods to clinical and basic biomedical research problems. In advancing the environment at Vanderbilt in high level statistics and related methodologies, Dr. Harrell has been active in assisting the VKC in designing Core C to offer both outstanding bio- and behavioral statistics consultation services for our Investigators, and to inject a generative component to the core, whereby consultants play a major role in new education and training programs, and research productivity at the VKC. Dr. Harrell serves as Director of Core C, with five statistical and one database and methodology consultants to support the efforts of 84 VKC Investigators. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]